by Ruth Owen
She stared at the crowd, biting her lower lip in indecision. The unconscious gesture robbed the stiffness from her coolly resolute face, revealing the soft, vulnerable woman beneath her rigid exterior. Suddenly Sam found himself wondering about her past, and about what had made her hide her softness below that layer of frosty reserve. It wasn’t his business. It wasn’t likely to become his business, since she was probably going to be on the next plane out of here. But as his gaze riveted on the innocently seductive motion of her teeth worrying her bottom lip, he found himself wondering all the same. Wondering that, and other things …
“Okay,” she said quietly as she lifted her gaze to his, “but I’d still rather sacrifice a chicken.”
Her joke curled around them like voodoo smoke, wrapping them in an enchantment, drawing a hesitant grin from both their unyielding mouths. The shared smile lasted less than a second, but it jarred something deep and rock solid at his core. A smile like that could haunt a man’s dreams. It could make him wish for things—impossible, crazy things that could rip his heart out if he let them—
“Hey! Jolly-mon is getting married!”
The laughing, cheering crowd surged against them like sea foam. One second she was in his arms—the next she was being pulled away by a dozen animated women. Noel looked back at him in panic. “Sam?”
“Don’t worry. They’re just taking you to—” His sentence ended abruptly as Jean Duprey the stonecutter slapped him heartily on the back, driving the air from his lungs.
“You’ll need more stamina than that for tonight, Jolly-mon.” Jean laughed as he thrust a mug of frothing brew into Sam’s hands.
Sam took a taste of the bitter, potent liquor, knowing from experience to stop after a few sips. The drink, known by the innocuous name of “sugar water” had a kick like a rampaging elephant. But he doubted even a barrel of the stuff could quiet the turmoil inside him. Intellectually, he knew that this marriage was just a business partnership, nothing more. They didn’t love each other. Hell, they didn’t even like each other. In two weeks she’d go back to the States, he’d get an “annulment” from Papa Guinea, and they’d go on with their lives as if nothing had happened.
It’s just business, he repeated silently as he lifted the cup to his lips and indulged in a final pull of the powerful, numbing liquor. So why did he feel like he’d just fallen overboard in the dead center of the Atlantic?
“Hey … don’t do … cut that …” Frustrated, Noel shut her mouth, realizing that no one was listening. Sighing, she raised her arms, and let the women who’d brought her to the church’s small vestry room pull off her soiled shirt and skirt. I’m doing this for science, she reminded herself as the women wadded her expensive designer clothes into a bundle and tossed them into the corner. I’m doing this for the Eden Project. And I’m going to get PINK and Einstein into the central mountains of this island even if it means getting dragged off by a pack of women who can’t understand me, being stripped down to my underwear, and even getting married to a cretin like Donovan.
Married to Donovan …
She shivered, an electric jolt shooting down her nearly naked spine. Get real, Noel. You’re not really marrying the guy. Yet the thought of marrying Sam Donovan—even a counterfeit marriage—made her feel like a pot of water on high boil.
“Mademoiselle?”
Startled out of her thoughts, Noel looked down at the little girl who stood at her side, and drew in her breath. The child was beautiful beyond words—not just because of her face or features, but because of the love and trust that radiated from her enormous eyes and brilliant smile.
Her sunburst smile still beaming, she held up a cup of what looked like water. “Pour vous. De l’eau à sucre.”
Sugar water, Noel translated silently, her high-school French class coming to her rescue. Probably some sort of island bridal tradition—and not a half-bad one considering the humidity and the tension. A cool, sweet drink was just what she needed. “Thanks. I mean, merci.”
Nodding, she returned the girl’s smile with genuine appreciation and lifted the cup to her lips—and almost gagged. The stuff was wretched—more like a dose of medicine than sugar water. She started to hand it back, when the little girl spoke again.
“Pour vous. Pour l’amour de mon ami Jolly-mon.”
For the sweetheart of my friend Jolly-mon. Noel could see the true affection in the girl’s eyes—she wasn’t just saying this as part of some bridal ritual. Surprised, Noel realized that her “macho-jerk” guide had taken the time and trouble to befriend this child, something she knew Hayward would never have done. She couldn’t help admiring him for it—and the thought of liking Donovan on any level scared the living daylights out of her.
Distracted, she took another drink from the cup, and was surprised to find that the second taste wasn’t nearly as bad as the first. In fact, she found it rather refreshing. She drained the cup and handed it back to the girl, who quickly replaced it with another. Another tradition, Noel thought as she took a sip of the second cup. Well, it’s not so bad. I could even get to like it.
The next few minutes were full of hectic activity as the women brought out a length of colorful, silky cloth and began to drape it around her body. They laughed and chatted endlessly in French that was too rapid for Noel to understand. Actually she wasn’t sure if she would have been able to follow the conversation. Her mind was caught like a fly in a spiderweb, wound tight with thoughts of men like her former boyfriend Hayward, marriage, and the way her life was supposed to be.
Though she’d broken it off with the workaholic Hayward, she still suspected she’d eventually end up with someone very much like him. A CPA, he’d plotted out their future with an accountant’s skill, determining the neighborhoods they’d live in, the friendships they’d cultivate, even the schools their two-point-four children would attend. It was a safe and secure future, as different from her mother’s foolish and tragic marriage as night from day. Yet try as she might, Noel couldn’t conjure up a picture of her children looking at Hayward with the love and adoration she’d seen in the little girl’s eyes when she’d spoken of her “Jolly-mon.”
Noel found herself wondering if security was enough. She hadn’t really thought about it before. But now, as she took a sip from her third (or was it her fourth?) cup of sugar water, she couldn’t seem to think of anything else.
All at once the women stopped talking and stepped away. The sudden, unnatural silence unnerved Noel. She started to speak, but found the words unaccountably hard to form. Thoughts and images began to run together in her mind like a watercolor left in the rain. Yet beneath the confusion was a clarity she’d never experienced before, as if all the muddled everyday concerns of her ordinary life had been swept away, revealing diamonds.
A floor-length mirror appeared in front of her out of what seemed like thin air and the image in the cloudy glass captured her attention—a slim woman with hair as dark as midnight, wrapped in an exotic dress that seemed to be made of spun rainbows. Astonished, she lifted her fingers to touch the cold glass, to prove to herself this was a reflection. Her reflection. But this can’t be me. This strange, exotic woman has nothing in common with Noel Revere, who’s about as unremarkable as gray Vermont granite.
Confused, she looked around for her companions, but they seemed to have evaporated like smoke in the wind. Nothing made sense on this island—from the myriad plaster gods, to the suddenly appearing mirror and the disappearing women, to the exotic customs, the unfathomable laws, the sweet water with the bitter taste, the macho-jerk guide who took time to befriend a child.…
Nothing made sense. She swallowed, looking again at the woman in the mirror—a woman who had less in common with her than night did with day. The phantom reflection was exotic and passionate, but not unfamiliar. Memories bubbled to the surface of her mind—a flash of a smile, a mischievous wink, the rich, vibrant sound of a man’s deep laughter. She’d kept the memories locked deep down inside her, jailed beneath the co
nservative constraints of her starched business suits and Puritan demeanor. She’d thought she was free of her painful past, but in the shadows and silence of the little room she could no longer deny the unsettling, unwanted truth.
It was conservative Dr. Noel Revere who stared at the reflection in the dark glass. But it was the ghost of her reckless, unreliable father who stared back at her.
Where the hell was she?
Donovan stood with his foot propped on the lowest altar step, staring at the half-open vestry door. “The others came out five minutes ago,” he muttered, his frustration growing by the second. “What’s the holdup?”
“Who knows a woman’s mind?” answered Jean Duprey in the breezy cadence of the island. A wide, knowing grin creased his face. “Getting anxious, Jolly-mon?”
Yeah, but not in the way you think. Donovan glanced over at his friend, the man who had taken him in his first day on the island. Over the years he’d grown to think of the Dupreys as the family he’d never had, and had recently become godfather to Jean’s youngest son. Relying on that friendship again, he’d asked Jean to stand up for him at the wedding. If there was going to be a wedding.
As the minutes ticked by, Sam became more and more convinced that Noel had had second thoughts, and that she’d figured that being married to him—even unofficially—was too high a price to pay for her research project. Not that he blamed her. This whole thing was damned unorthodox, and unorthodox didn’t come easy to by-the-book types like Dr. Noel Revere. Besides, she’d made it painfully clear that she couldn’t stand the sight of him.
Jean slapped him soundly on the back, jarring him back to the present. “You are some lucky fellow. I tell you now that I was worried about you. You been here so long and you take no woman.”
Sam gave a short, humorless laugh. There were shortages on the island, but willing companions wasn’t one of them. “I haven’t exactly been celibate, my friend.”
The older man didn’t return his smile. “Those women feed the hunger of your body, not your heart. You need more, Jolly-mon. You have for a long time.”
You’re dead wrong. I don’t need anyone, he thought, looking away before his friend saw his cynical, self-deprecating grimace. Sure, there were times when he envied men like Jean, who’d found a good, loving woman to settle down with. But that life wasn’t for him. His one sail into the hazardous waters of love had left him alone and stranded on the reef of despair. He’d be a fool to chart a course back into that kind of hell again.
He rubbed his beard-roughened jaw, recalling just enough of the past to make himself remember why he’d left it behind him for the simple, undemanding lifestyle of St. Michelle’s “Jolly-mon.”
“She’s here,” Jean whispered.
Finally, he thought, turning back around. Now we can get this charade over wi—
He caught sight of her, and froze.
They’d changed her clothes for the traditional multicolored wedding dress of the island—he’d expected that. But he hadn’t expected the way she’d look in it, like a delicate, beautiful angelfish swimming through the night reef of the crowd. Her stiffness was gone, replaced by the subtle, mesmerizing grace he’d seen earlier that day in the bedroom when she’d thought she was alone. Unable to stop himself, his gaze slid down the slim, glove-snug material of her dress, over her barely concealed curves, to the dancing slimness of her bare feet. Dammit, she could have worn her shoes at least. A Ph.D should wear shoes.…
Like a swimmer dragged down by a strong current he stepped down off the altar and reached for her hand. She turned at his touch, and looked up at him with eyes deep enough to drown in. The brittle frost was gone, revealing an honesty and strength of spirit so pure it robbed him of his breath. Her trust shattered him. Her beauty intoxicated him. He fell into her gaze, feeling an ache inside him for something more than passion, more than sex. She was fascinating. She was irresistible.
She swayed against him, and gave a small, discreetly refined hiccup.
She was drunk.
“Lord,” he groaned, steadying her arm. “How much did you have to drink?”
She blinked, clearly having some trouble focusing. “A few cups. Was only sugar water.”
“Yeah, well that water could fuel a space shuttle. Just follow my lead, okay?” He grasped her elbow and drew her to his side, and tried to guide her toward the stairs. No luck. She swayed again in his arms, tumbling against him in a way that sent an electric jolt slamming through his already overcharged system. I can’t do this. I can’t marry a woman who hates me so much she had to get drunk to do it. Even I’m not that low.
“Look,” he whispered rawly against her ear, “you don’t have to do this. I’ll take you back to the car.”
“But my research …”
“We’ll find another way.”
He stepped down and started to steer her away from the altar. Unexpectedly, she dug her heels into the dirt floor.
“I’m not going,” she stated, her delicate jaw set in a stubbornness a mule would have envied. “There is no other way. Said so y’self. I’ve got to do this. Einstein and PINK’re depending on me. Can’t let them down. Can’t be like him …”
Sam didn’t know who him was, and now sure wasn’t the time and place to ask. Jean was peering at them suspiciously, and even Papa Guinea had looked up from his audience with a member of the crowd. In another minute the shaman would smell a rat and call the wedding off, regardless of what either of them wanted.
And what exactly do you want, Donovan?
He shoved the question away. He could deal with only one crisis at a time, and right now he had all the trouble he needed looking at him with wide, uncertain, and hopelessly innocent emerald eyes. He was a hard man who’d lived a hard life, but her gaze ripped through his tough hide like a rhino bullet through body armor. Christ, the kid didn’t have a clue what she did to him with that trusting, almost worshipful look. Or how little he deserved it …
Think about the money. He dragged his gaze from hers, forcing his mind onto the job and the money he’d make doing it. That was what mattered. That was real, not some crazy emotion that he had no more business feeling than a pig did sprouting wings. He grimaced, pulling his jaw into a tight, hard line. “Okay, it’s your call,” he growled as he gripped her elbow and steered her up the steps. “But this is your idea, not mine.”
In the candlelight he caught the edge of her green glance, full of gratitude and heartfelt relief. He jerked his gaze away, knowing he didn’t deserve that, either.
I’m getting married.
The words buzzed through her head like persistent flies as she knelt in front of the altar rail. She tried to concentrate on the fact that this wasn’t a real marriage, and that the feather-garbed shaman performing the ceremony had no more authority to pronounce her someone’s wife than the local dogcatcher, but her mind wouldn’t cooperate. Her thoughts kept straying to the man who knelt beside her at the rail, a man she barely knew. And what she did know didn’t make her feel very safe.
She glanced over at him. Candlelight shifted over the rugged planes of his face and illuminated the sheen of sweat on his tanned skin. He was still as the stone steps they knelt on, yet she could sense the cold fire burning inside him, the violence that both frightened and fascinated her. She swallowed, her gaze riveted on his remote expression, feeling a strange hunger build inside her. No, safe wasn’t a word anyone would use to describe Sam Donovan. But there were other words that came to mind, words that would send her proper New England ancestors spinning in their graves—
She yanked her gaze away, trying to collect her scattered thoughts. No luck. The soft, sacred cadence of Papa Guinea’s indecipherable words, the staring interest of the hundred people and the thousand gods, and the strange, seductive energy she’d felt since she’d landed on the island wrapped themselves around her like a second skin. Unable to resist, her gaze crept back to the man beside her.
Okay, I’m human, she admitted silently as she stared
at his heartbreakingly handsome face. Her gaze drifted down the strong column of his throat, fastening on a glistening bead of sweat sliding down his skin. She bit her lip, fighting an urge to press her mouth to that throat and lose herself in the hot, heady taste of his flesh. She’d always repressed her fantasies, seeing them as part of the bad blood that ran through her very proper veins. But for once she didn’t feel guilty. After all, what was the harm in it? He wasn’t interested in her physically—he’d made that more than clear with that “old maid” crack. So why not let her imagination live a little? Why not pretend, just a minute or two, that this was a real marriage?
So she pretended. She imagined that she was madly in love with him, and that he was madly in love with her. She visualized him taking her in his arms and kissing her—not the predictable, measured kiss that Hayward gave her, but a kiss as wild and unpredictable as the waves that thundered against the island shore. She closed her eyes, drowning in the lush, forbidden fantasy. But there’s no harm in it. No harm at a—
“Oh hell,” he muttered.
Noel froze. Had he read her mind? It was impossible, but the impossible seemed an everyday event in this weird, magical place. She cleared her throat, making a titanic effort to keep her voice steady. “What’s a matter?”
“Something I forgot, something about the ceremony. I have to kiss you.”
“What?”
“Pipe down,” he growled, gripping her wrist. “We’ve come this far. Don’t blow it now.”
“But a kiss!” Her mind reeled from a harmless fantasy that had suddenly become dangerously real. If he kissed her he might realize what she’d been fantasizing about. And she’d die if he found out, she’d just die.
He said nothing, but his expression hardened, growing still and deadly. Papa Guinea and the crowd faded to nothing, leaving only the reality of his strong fingers gripping her wrist, his muscular form towering over her like a dark mountain, and his eyes searching hers with a stabbing, subtle violence. His gaze absorbed her, stripped her bare, leaving her vulnerable and exposed, spiritually naked. Too late, she realized that kissing him could cost her more than her pride. It could cost her her soul.
